I couldn’t love you
to the moon or back,
too busy on the ground
mincing chicken, plugging
power outlets. But sooner or later
perils slip through—
the occasional meteor,
a novel virus,
even the nail clipper
I tried to wield
while you nursed—
its curved metal beak.
Your hand wandered
to my lip. I caught it,
trusted my teeth
to nip one nail,
then another. Cheeks
curved up at the logic,
let the nipple
pop free.
So, I gobbled
your planet-plump fist
into my mouth,
five finger constellation.
Your first laughs erupted in ovals,
crackled all the way down
to the rug, sizzled there
a long time after.
Click here to read Melody Wilson on the origin of the poem.
Image: photo by Zach Lucero on Unsplash, licensed under CC 2.0.
Melody Wilson: Maybe it’s envy, but the phrase “I love you to the moon and back” has always bothered me. I became a mother at sixteen and had to be very practical. So this poem begins with resistance and ends up in wonder.
I didn’t have any trouble listing dangers and loved working through the nail clippers once they occurred to me. I remember the appearance of “curved beak” with delight. However, describing the baby’s smile was a little tricky. I remember my daughter got a huge kick out of me biting her nails, but I struggled to describe it. I liked the word “logic” immediately, but because she’s an infant, I worried about it. Once I came upon the “gobbling” passage, the rest of the transition fell right into place.
The poem probably existed within just a couple of drafts except getting those first laughs down to the ground. Of all my poems, this might have been the most challenging to close, and I’m still not sure I have it right. It’s possible I should have abandoned the falling laughs and gone another direction, but I just couldn’t let go of the image.
Melody Wilson’s work appears in Sugar House Review, VerseDaily, Tar River Review, and Crab Creek Review. Upcoming work is in Kestrel and The Shore. She received 2022 Pushcart nominations from Redactions and Red Rock Review and was semi-finalist for the Pablo Neruda Award. She is pursuing her MFA at Pacific University. Find more of her work at melodywilson.com.
Latest posts by Melody Wilson
(see all)